Free versus regulated migration: Comparing the wages of the New Zealand‐born, other migrants and the Australia‐born workers in Australia

Abstract

New Zealanders can cross borders freely, work and live in Australia indefinitely thanks to the Trans‐Tasman Travel Agreement. This paper uses a recently developed decomposition method to decompose the weekly wage gap at various quantiles on the wage distribution between New Zealand‐born (NZ‐born) and Australian‐born workers, and between NZ‐born workers, migrants from other English speaking countries (OESC), and from non‐English speaking countries (NESC) to determine how free and regulated migration influences migrants’ performance in the Australian labour market. We found that NZ‐born workers earned higher weekly wages than both Australian‐born and NESC workers but earned lower wages than OESC migrants. Differences in endowment were primarily responsible for the wage gaps between NZ‐born and Australian‐born workers and between NZ‐born and OESC migrants. However, differences in returns to worker and job characteristics are mainly responsible for the wage gap between NZ‐born and NESC migrants.

Working longer hours and body weight: An Australian study using household panel data (with measures of paid and unpaid time) to provide gender-specific estimates

“… Kifle & Desta, 2012 ; Taouk, Milner, & LaMontagne, 2019 ; Keramat et al, 2021 ). For example, Australia has a very high proportion of immigrants (about 30% born overseas) and also has a very large geographic coverage spanning over six states and two territories, with diverse labour market patterns in terms of wage income and workhours across location and ethnicity ( Doan et al, 2023 ).…”

Health promoting and demoting consumption: What accounts for budget share differentials by ethnicity in New Zealand

“…Recent advances in econometric techniques allow one to decompose the drivers of differences by ethnicity, such as wage gaps or household expenditure gaps in this context, into composition effects (gaps due to individual and household characteristics) and structure effects (gaps due to returns to individual and household characteristics) ( Firpo et al, 2009 , 2018 ). Doan et al (2022) showed that differences in worker and job characteristics were primarily responsible for the wage gaps between NZ-born and Australian-born workers, and between NZ-born and other English speaking migrants, but differences in returns to worker and job characteristics are mainly responsible for the wage gap between NZ-born and non-English speaking background (NES) migrants in Australia. Barriers to NES migrants remain in the Australian labour market, where there is still significant unequal treatment to NES migrants.…”